


Moving Snapshots

by makokitten



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Crushes, F/F, F/M, M/M, Potterlock, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-02
Updated: 2013-07-14
Packaged: 2017-12-16 20:12:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/866135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/makokitten/pseuds/makokitten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Glimpses of John Watson and Sherlock Holmes' seven years at Hogwarts - solving mysteries, making friends, suffering adolescent angst, and, on occasion, saving their classmates from certain doom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. beginning

**Author's Note:**

> Based on this [thirty day writing challenge](http://makokitten.tumblr.com/post/54382482348/). Some of the chapters will be longer than others!
> 
> Thanks to [Seth](h3rring.tumblr.com) for looking these over. c:

* * *

            John Watson has trouble finding a seat on the Hogwarts Express.  The other first years are easy to spot, but they all split off into their own groups: the pretty, dark-haired girl he noticed on Platform 9¾ wanders off with a tall boy, another, smaller boy with a widow’s peak stumbling to keep up behind them.  The dark-skinned girl and the boy with the nose apparently know each other already and have joined a group of girls that John couldn’t hope to infiltrate.  Eventually, John sighs and slips into the first compartment he finds that’s remotely empty.

            There are two other people in the compartment, both still in Muggle clothes: a mousy, skittish-looking girl holding an equally skittish-looking kitten, and a boy whose brown hair is so puffy that he reminds John of a sheep with an overgrown coat.  The boy stares at the ceiling, sprawled out across one of the seats; the girl’s eyes are fixed pointedly down on her kitten.  They both glance up when John shuts the door. 

            “Err, sorry,” John says.  “Is it okay if I sit here?”

            The boy’s eyes fix on John, icy blue and intense.  “You’re a half-blood,” he says.

            “Err,” John says again.

            “With a brother who’s older than you,” the boy continues, “Probably.  Your family’s a bit poor.  And you’re good at defensive spells—well, you will be if you attempt them.”  And then, with a haughty little sniff, he adds, “Good.”

            John glances at the girl, who only looks back at him, wide-eyed.  He can only assume she received the same treatment.  “I’m going to sit down now,” John says, slowly and clearly, and he takes the seat next to her.  “I’m John Watson,” he tells her.

            When she opens her mouth, her voice is soft.  “I’m—”

            “Molly Hooper,” says the sheep-haired boy.  “And the cat is Toby.  She told me once, I don’t need to hear it again.”

            John turns back to him.  “Are you a Seer or something?”

            “No.”

            “Then what’s your _problem_?”  He wracks his brains—something Harry told him comes back to mind.  “You don’t happen to be… a Holmes?”

            The boy sits up a little.  “How did you know?”

            John smiles.  “My sister’s said a lot about your brother.  That’s all.”

            “ _Sister_ ,” the boy mutters under his breath.  “Should have known it was a sister.”  Then: “What’s she say?”

            “She said he’s a real prat.”

            Now it’s the boy who smiles.  He’s easier to like when he smiles, although John hasn’t made up his mind about him yet.  “Don’t let him hear you say that.  He’s Head Boy.” 

            “So she must have been at least a little right,” John replies.

            The younger Holmes laughs; after a second, John laughs, too.  Even Molly Hooper smiles a little, although Toby the kitten squirms in her lap.  The air in the compartment warms considerably, and John settles down against the seat.  The other boy’s blue eyes track his every movement.

            “Sherlock Holmes,” he says at last.  “I’ll let you decide whether I’m as unbearable as my older brother.”

            “That’s fair,” says John.

            It’s only a short while later, when the food trolley arrives, that Sherlock likes John enough to give John his Chocolate Frog card without asking anything in return, claiming to have no use for it.  As Circe simpers at him from her little portrait, John thinks that anyone willing to do something like that can’t be _too_ insufferable.

            Then again, he’s been wrong before.


	2. accusation

* * *

            “People are going to think you fooled the Sorting Hat somehow,” John tells Sherlock as they hurry out of the Great Hall.  Their prefects’ voices carry easily over the heads of the first year students, who whisper eagerly among themselves.  Most are excited.  Not all.

            “Don’t be a moron,” Sherlock snaps, peevish.  He is neither deaf nor blind, John Watson.  He knows what people will think.  He heard it in their murmurs and saw it in their stares after the Sorting Hat was removed from his head.  Even now, some of the second and third years are eyeing him with suspicion, as if he doesn’t belong.  Thinking he’ll take after his brother, no doubt.  Do you think he doesn’t notice?  He notices too much.  He notices the streaks of grey in the Headmistress’ hair, the burn on the Care of Magical Creatures teacher’s hand that he kept pulling his sleeve down to hide.

            What he hasn’t learned yet, and will in time, is what these things mean.  He sees everything, but his interpretive skills could use some work, and he knows it.  He’d practiced on John in their compartment: John’s competence at dressing like a Muggle indicated at least one Muggle parent, but the hand-me-down items (black unisex robes, books) that were old but not _too_ old indicated both relative poverty and a magical older sibling.  Families with Muggle parents and more than one wizard or witch offspring are rare.  The grass stains on John’s knees showed that he'd been pushed to the ground, likely _by_ that older sibling since he didn't seem the type to get bullied, but there were no marks on him and his fists weren’t scraped, which meant that he’d been able to defend himself competently with his untrained magical powers, not physical force.  Once those powers are honed, his Shield Charms will be very good.

            That’s all basic information, easy to read.  However, he was wrong about Harry the sister, and he hadn’t been able to tell where John was from, or how he’d spent his summer, or much about his temperament.  He had to find that out by talking.  Surprisingly, talking to John was not dull—although John is, a bit.  Only as much as everyone else.  Sherlock tells him, “It’s impossible to fool the Sorting Hat.”

            “But you said on the Hogwarts Express that everyone else in your family has been either—”

            Sherlock frowns.  “Sometimes people in pure-blood families end up in unexpected houses.  It’s happened before.”

            “Well… yeah.”  John shrugs.  They get bumped from behind by a gaggle of fifth years pushing past.  “I just thought you’d be put somewhere different, I don’t know.”

            “I told the Sorting Hat exactly what it needed to know.”

            “You _told_ it?”

            “Yes.”

            John furrows his brow.  His eyebrows are darker than his hair, closer to brown than blond.  “I didn’t know you could tell the Sorting Hat things.”

            “That’s because it screamed ‘Gryffindor’ the second it touched you.”

            They’re out in a corridor now, and they both take a minute to listen and make sure they don’t get split off from the group.  Once they’re certain that they’re with the right first years, John asks, “What did you tell it?”

            “I told it that if it put me in Slytherin I would set it on fire,” says Sherlock, as if it’s the most reasonable thing in the world.  “That’s Mycroft’s house.  Then it said that I would be very wise if—”

            “Yeah, kind of thought you’d be Ravenclaw.” 

            “—and I said to _it_ that being in Ravenclaw seemed like a waste of time.  Solving riddles to get into the common room?  Even in an emergency?  It doesn’t make any sense.  And from what I’ve read—“  He’d researched all four houses extensively before setting foot anywhere near the Hogwarts Express.  “—the answers aren’t even real answers, they’re all wishy-washy and up to interpretation.  I like real answers.”

            “You’d like Muggle science,” John observes.

            “I _do_ like Muggle science,” Sherlock replies.  “Mummy sometimes lets me get books out of the Muggle library.” 

            “What, for fun?”

            Sherlock ignores that.  “So then it told me I had some nerve, and put me here.  Honestly, I find the sorting system a bit outdated, and Gryffindor is fine with me if it allows me to be myself.  I like myself.  Besides, more interesting things happen to Gryffindors.”

            “And now we’re Gryffindors together,” John concludes, grinning.  Can tell a lot about a person from his smile.  John Watson has a very nice smile.  Good teeth.  “I can’t say I’m unhappy about it.  It’s good to know someone.  Molly Hooper got sent off to Hufflepuff, and that pure-blood boy who introduced himself to you before seems… not very nice.”

            “The Morans are friends of my father,” Sherlock mutters.  “That’s all.  I don’t want anything to do with them.  I’d rather be with you.”

            “Well, you gave me your Chocolate Frog card,” says John, “so I think you’re stuck with me.”

            For once in his life, Sherlock is surprised.  This entire time, he thought John was just talking to him out of politeness.  That’s usually the only reason people do.  “Really?”

            They stop in front of the portrait of the Fat Lady before John can respond—and John, who evidently _hasn’t_ read _Hogwarts: A History_ , stares up at her, wide-eyed with wonder and curiosity, and doesn’t notice Sherlock goggling at the back of his head.


	3. restless

* * *

            At age eleven, Irene Adler is everything a good little witch should be.  She, like her parents before her, has been sorted into Slytherin House.  She is very bright—brighter than she lets on, in fact, but she dims it to a reasonable level of brightness because when she was about six and didn’t know enough to hold her tongue, her mother took her aside and said, “Don’t just go spouting off nonsense, Irene.  You’ll scare people.”  She’s now learned to keep her more troubling observations to herself, and exceeds in her classes without coming off as a know-it-all.  Irene is also very pretty; she practices her beauty spells in the bathroom mirror, mastering some that even sixth year girls would struggle with.  Her hair is always sleek and dark and shiny.  Some of her classmates regularly ask to touch it.

            Irene is everything a good little witch should be, except she’s beginning to suspect that she might like girls.

            It’s the fault of the Gryffindor Quidditch captain, really.  Harry Watson is seventeen, brash, confident, and openly gay.  The first time Irene sees her soaring over the Quidditch pitch during the Gryffindor-Hufflepuff match, her stomach does an odd sort of swoop that has nothing to do with Harry skillfully beating a Bludger away from the Slytherin stands.  Slytherin and Gryffindor are supposed to be rivals—why would Irene applaud Gryffindor skill?  But Irene finds that she can’t take her eyes off of Harry, and her strong shoulders, and her brown ponytail, until the match ends and she dismounts her broom to fist-bump the Hufflepuff captain—and Keeper—Greg Lestrade.  Hufflepuffs are gracious losers.

            Irene knows nothing will come of her infatuation.  She’s six years Harry’s junior, and Harry already has a pretty blonde girlfriend named Clara.  They kiss in the corridors between classes sometimes, and if Irene happens to be nearby, her face grows hot.  She daydreams about luring Harry away from Clara (that would be some kind of power, she thinks) but is not fool enough to do anything more than that.

            The only child of two very traditional pure-blood parents, Irene is expected to marry into an old pure-blood line with a good reputation.  Expressing an interest in a half-blood female Gryffindor would be enough to get her disowned.  Her parents would much rather her be attracted to someone like Sebastian Moran, with his good looks and flawless pedigree, which is a shame because Irene only tolerates Sebastian for appearance’s sake.  She’d marry Molly Hooper, that little Muggle-born Hufflepuff who’s constantly worrying at some charm around her neck, before she married Sebastian Moran.  He likes Irene much more than she likes him.  She can tell that he likes her because he’s constantly bragging around her, and sometimes he pokes her in the back of the neck with his quill.

            There is something rotten about him, though, and something odd about that little Ravenclaw boy who’s constantly trailing after him—Jim somebody, no one special.  Sebastian is very callous with Jim in public, but Irene notices that he’s never once asked Jim to do his homework for him.  That’s what she would do, were she him, knowing that he is rotten.

            She does not tell him that he is rotten, because she’s learned to keep her troubling observations to herself.

            The only boy that she finds remotely interesting is Sherlock Holmes, yet another Gryffindor, and she doesn’t find him interesting in the same way she finds Harry Watson interesting.  She senses in Sherlock a kindred spirit, similar to her in the way that he thinks—only he doesn’t keep his troubling observations to himself.  He is unafraid to tell anyone exactly what he can see in them, but he gets away with that because he’s a boy.  His behavior earns him a few enemies, but he maintains a close friend in John Watson, Harry’s younger brother.  They’re always talking over some mystery or another in the back of their Potions class, heads pressed together.  They have time enough.  Sherlock always finishes his potions early.

            Irene wishes she had someone to talk with like that.  Oh, it’s fine to talk when you’re a girl, but not about anything serious.  Not out loud.  Her bottled-up thoughts threaten to consume her, but she has nowhere to air them.  She might know of a place, though.  A quiet place, long-hidden, half-legend, that only she has the key to access.

            Finding it will take a while.  Until then, she holds out hope that her problem will disappear when Harry Watson graduates, or maybe sooner, maybe in a few months, when she turns twelve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [fancypantskid](http://archiveofourown.org/users/fancypantskid/) made [really cute fanart](http://i.imgur.com/R7ER1kX.jpg) for this chapter! Thank you so much!


	4. snowflake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for your positive feedback!

* * *

_Dear Meena,_

That was the easy part.  Molly Hooper isn’t sure how to write out the rest of this letter.  After all, Meena’s a Muggle, and there are some things you just can’t tell Muggles.

            She tugs at the little rabbit’s foot that she wears around her neck, a good luck present from her Muggle parents, as she tries to figure out what to say next.  Some of the other students, especially the Slytherins, tease her for wearing something with no magical merit whatsoever, but she keeps it anyway.  When she touches it, it reminds her of home, of her parents hugging her when she came back for Christmas holiday, of Meena and Caroline, her friends from home (although Caroline can sometimes be cruel).  The girls begged her to at _least_ write them letters from her prestigious boarding school after she explained that she was _really_ sorry but she couldn’t phone them even if she wanted to.  She agreed.  She even pinky swore.

            Molly looks up at the falling snow slowly filling up the round windows of the Hufflepuff common room and sighs.  She reaches down to pet Toby, who’s given up on trying to gnaw on her rabbit’s foot and fallen asleep in her lap.  Well, she promised to write, so now she has to follow through.  She sucks in a deep breath.

            _It’s been two weeks since I went back to school and I miss you already._

            There, that seems all right.  That wasn’t so hard, was it?  Molly dips her quill in the ink again and keeps going. 

            _It’s snowing today.  The snow here is very pretty.  I’m probably going to go outside later and bring Toby with me if he wants to go.  Maybe we will build a snowman._

            _Classes are going well.  All of my professors are really nice except for the Chemistry one, he’s really strict, and the History one who is so boring.  I have a lot of homework but not as much as the older students do._

            Potions becomes Chemistry in the letter because at any other school it wouldn’t make sense for her to have a Potions class.  She thinks this is a pretty clever switch.  Potions is kind of the wizarding equivalent of Chemistry, after all.  She really likes Herbology, but she’s not sure how to turn that class into something she can talk to Meena about.  Gardening’s the closest, but that’s not a subject at normal schools.  She keeps writing, figuring she may as well move away from classes and say whatever comes to mind.

            _When I saw you at Christmas you and Caroline asked if there was anyone I fancied at school and I didn’t answer.  Well, I don’t know if there is anyone I fancy but there’s this one boy who’s different.  He’s the smartest person I’ve ever met and he’s always getting in trouble.  The other day_  

            Molly pauses again to think, and a few drops of dark ink drip onto her parchment from the nib of her quill.  How could she talk about Sherlock Holmes and John Watson sneaking into the Forbidden Forest?  No one else knows they’d done it, as far as she can tell.  She only knows because she was standing behind them when they were discussing it, and she quickly hurried off before they noticed her.

            She could say “sneaking off school grounds” but that doesn’t even begin to cover how dangerous the Forest is!  If she says that, it’ll sound like the most dangerous bit was avoiding capture, when in fact that was probably the least of Sherlock and John’s worries.

            She wracks her brains for an alternative, but can’t come up with anything.  Oh well.  It’ll have to do if she wants to finish the story.

            _The other day I heard him and his best friend talking about how they snuck off school grounds which is really dangerous!  I don’t know how they didn’t get caught but I’m glad nothing bad happened to them._

            _Don’t tell Caroline, she’ll say he’s a bad boy and tease me for fancying him.  But I don’t know if I fancy him.  I might.  I don’t know._

            _How are you?  How is school?  Do you fancy anyone?  Tell me everything!  Send my love to everyone at home!!_

            _Your friend,_  
            _Molly_

            Molly sits back in her chair.  Who knew that a simple letter could take so much effort?  She rereads it twice to see if there’s anything she missed, any bit of the wizarding world she might have accidentally included, and then smiles, pleased with her handiwork.  After Toby wakes up, she’ll find an envelope and climb up to the Owlery.  The school owls will be smart enough to deliver the letter through Meena’s mail slot with the rest of her post so that it doesn’t look too suspicious.

            She only hopes that Meena won’t wonder why the letter was written with a quill, on parchment.


	5. haze

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My lovely beta was instrumental in fixing this one up. Thank you so much, Seth.

* * *

_Come at once, if convenient.  
_ _If inconvenient, come anyway._

            John Watson stares at the words scrawled in familiar handwriting across the top of the roll of parchment, watching the ink slowly fade away until the message is no longer visible.  He did not write the message, but he knows who did.

            Sherlock had charmed two identical rolls of parchment—he never did tell John how—so that they would have a way to keep in touch over the summer holiday that was quicker than owl post.  He demonstrated to John that when one of them wrote on one parchment, the words would instantly be transferred to the other.  That way, he explained, they would be able to pass notes no matter how far apart they were.

            “Oh,” John had said, admittedly impressed but also feeling that there was a much simpler way to go about that.  “Sort of like texting?”

            “I don’t know what that is,” Sherlock replied peevishly.

            As it turns out, Sherlock Holmes, the brightest student in their year, has never seen a phone in his life. 

            John agreed to keep the roll of parchment close by in case Sherlock ever needed to tell him something important, a promise he can’t always keep because he sometimes goes off to do other things like play football with the Muggle children in his neighborhood.  However, on this particular afternoon, John is in his room surfing the Internet—something he’d missed at Hogwarts—when Sherlock’s urgent message reaches him.

            He’s downstairs in seconds.  If he were a Muggle, it’d a major impediment that he lives in London and Sherlock lives all the way out in a big old house in the countryside.  As it is, all John has to do is make a beeline for the jar of Floo powder on the mantelpiece and call to his mother, “I’m going to Sherlock’s!  Be back later!” 

            “Not too late!” she calls back.

            A short, dizzying trip later, John emerges from the fireplace in Sherlock’s living room dusty, but no worse for wear.  Although he’s not quite sure he’s actually out of the fireplace—mostly because the rest of the big house seems to smell like one, too.

            “Why is there so much smoke in here?” John asks, waving his hands around in a futile attempt to clear the air in front of his face. 

            “Sherrinford set Father’s violin on fire,” says Sherlock, unperturbed, from the sofa.

            “ _What_?!”

            “We aren’t going to suffocate.  I opened a window—”

            John stares at him.  “Well, why haven’t you put the fire _out_?”

            “—and I don’t think he _meant_ to set it on fire, he just hasn’t learned how to control his magic yet.  It’s in the pewter cauldron in the kitchen with some other rubbish—”

            “That wasn’t what I—” 

            “—because he put it there first and then set it on fire by accident.  Oh, right.  There’s a bucket on the top shelf of the closet and I can’t reach it even with a stool.  I’d use magic to summon it, but I’m not allowed.  It’s one of those law things.  Mycroft won’t shut up about them now that he’s joined the Ministry.”

            John coughs a little.  “We’re not going to learn Summoning Charms for years anyway,” he points out.

            Sherlock, who doesn’t seem bothered by the smoke at all, snorts.

            “I suppose that’s never stopped you,” John concedes, and he goes to fetch the stool, and then the bucket.  It’s not long before he fills the bucket with water from the old kitchen tap and douses the fire in the kitchen cauldron, which hisses and pops angrily before dying out.

            The violin and whatever else Sherrinford had flung in there during his tempter tantrum are now unrecognizable black ashes that still smolder slightly.  John sets the bucket down and goes to rejoin Sherlock in the sitting room, wiping the sweat from his forehead.  It’s a hot, hazy summer day even without unexpected fires.  John could go for a glass of water, but he has questions first.

            Sherlock continues to lie there on the sofa, looking up at the ceiling as John settles himself down in one of the old armchairs.  He doesn’t look at John.  John is used to that.  Sometimes there are so many thoughts in Sherlock’s head that he just has to look at nothing for a bit.  It’s annoying, but John understands.

            He clears his throat.  “Um… your mum’s not home, then.”  He doesn’t know much about Sherlock’s family, but he knows that Sherlock’s parents aren’t on very good terms, and that Sherlock mostly lives with his mother.

            A curt reply: “She’s out.”

            “She’s in St. Mungo’s,” says a voice from the door. 

            John turns.  He’s never met the youngest Holmes brother, Sherrinford, and his first impression is that this is not a very good day to do so.  Sherrinford is smaller than Sherlock and slightly less twiggy, his hair is straight but no less unkempt.  He and Sherlock have the same color eyes, and he is wearing the deepest frown in the world. 

            “I thought you were packing,” says Sherlock. 

            “I heard you,” Sherrinford snaps.  “You don’t have to try to act cool in front of your friend—” 

            “Just because I _have_ a friend—”

            John looks from one of them to the other, but it’s Sherrinford he decides to address.  “What’s wrong with your mum?” he asks.  Sherlock shifts uncomfortably.

            “If the Healers knew, they’d have fixed her by now.”  Sherrinford rocks forward on the balls of his feet.  “She’s very sick.  _He_ didn’t want you to know.”

            “Don’t listen to him,” says Sherlock, whose ears are turning red.  “He’s just upset because our father’s coming to pick him up in an hour.”

            “Let’s see how _you’d_ feel if _you_ had to spend the weekend with _him_.” 

            “I _don’t_ ,” Sherlock retorts, “because I’m old enough to stay here by myself.  Sherrinford, go _pack_.” 

            Sherrinford huffs, but turns on his heels and leaves.  John can hear the heavy thudding of his footsteps on the stairs, and then, somewhere else in the house, a door slams, rattling on its hinges.  Sherlock exhales, covering his face with his hands.

            John goes over to him, sitting down on the arm of the sofa.  “So,” he says.  “Your mum’s sick.”

            A muffled noise from between Sherlock’s hands.

            “It’s okay,” John says quickly.  “It’s really—I mean, it’s not okay, but, you know.  It’s not… it doesn’t have to be some big secret.”  He licks his lips nervously.  “They really don’t know what’s wrong with her?”

            Sherlock balls up his hands, rubbing his eyes, then scrubs at his scalp.  “It’s the way she is,” he says.  “In pure-blood families, when you have too many cousins marrying cousins, sometimes things get… mixed up.  That’s how Mycroft explained it.  Sherrinford’s too young to understand.  It’s worse now that she’s older, she just loses control—she can’t control her magic.  Sometimes it just takes her over.”

            “I’m sorry,” says John, who doesn’t know what else to say.

            Not wanting to answer, or maybe at a loss for words, Sherlock just shifts onto his side, away from John.

            “It doesn’t seem fair, though,” John remarks, “that your dad’s coming for Sherrinford and you have to stay here all alone.” 

            “I’d rather stay here than go with _him_.”

            “What about Mycroft?”

            “Mycroft’s got his own place in London, and he’s busy.  I’d be in the way.” 

            The last bit sounds more like Mycroft’s opinion than Sherlock’s.  John mulls this over, turning the facts this way and that in his brain.  It just didn’t seem fair that someone so brilliant should be so brilliantly neglected.  Sherlock’s undoubtedly the most interesting person John’s ever known, and to see this…  “You could come with me,” he suggests at last.  “I’m sure my mum and dad wouldn’t mind.”

            Sherlock sits up a little.  “Really?” 

            “Yeah,” John says.  “Just until your mum is out of St. Mungo’s.” 

            Sherlock’s eyes widen, then he shakes his head, regains his composure, and says, “Well, I’ll just go and get my things.” 

            “Okay,” says John.  “Take your time.  I’ll be right here.” 

            John watches him follow Sherrinford’s path upstairs, hears him march up the stairs.  He looks around at the house that Sherlock’s mother had inherited from her parents, so old and so big and so very _empty_ , and is suddenly overcome with the urge to show Sherlock Holmes what a normal family is like.


	6. flame

* * *

            The first thing Irene Adler says when she opens the Chamber of Secrets is, “ _Go back to sleep_.” 

            It comes out as a spitting hiss; somehow, she knows it works.  She listens carefully for the stirring of the basilisk that rests within the statue of Salazar Slytherin and hears nothing.  That’s good, then.  She doesn’t want to further the ancient and outdated pure-blood agenda.  She just wants a place that belongs to her.

            Irene’s broomstick is a sleek, new model—a Cleansweep Seventeen—and she clutches it tightly as she studies her surroundings.  The Chamber itself is impressively roomy but crumbling in places, and she finds the décor typical of all things Slytherin: dark and distasteful, all sickly greenish-black.  Irene’s never understood why the wealthiest and most powerful wizarding families in England insist on living in the dark.  “Could do with a few torches in here,” she says to herself.  “A little fire never hurt anyone.”

            Her words echo off of the ancient stone walls, and she knows at once the profound contentment of being alone with her thoughts.

            It’s not that she doesn’t like company, generally speaking.  People are opportunities; many of them have something to offer.  Irene is adept at making connections with other students, even some of the fourth and fifth years who’d never otherwise give a second-year like her the time of day.  She’s quick-witted, comely, and appears trustworthy, at least for a Slytherin.  She goes out of her way to befriend people of good social status outside of her House.  She learns about them—comforting them as they rant about their relatives who drink or gamble or have strange preferences for goblin women, their parents who may be slightly mad—and tucks the information away until she needs a favor.

            The girls are most willing to talk.  The youngest Nott girl’s parents, for example, are disappointed in her for being sorted into Hufflepuff, and constantly threaten to pull her out of school if she can’t keep her marks up.  One of the Macmillans once offered her Gillyweed to smoke (she declined) and told her where she could get more if she wanted.  Alexa Blishwick bites her nails to the quick because her uncle is about to go on trial for embezzling gold from the Ministry, something the family has tried very hard to keep hushed up.  But the boys, less eager to speak, are hiding interesting tidbits of their own that she uncovers after some investigation: Sherlock Holmes’ mother has been in and out of St. Mungo’s for the past three years, and she’s almost entirely certain that Sebastian Moran’s father is at least verbally abusive. 

            Looking at people and reading them instantly and listening to them is so _exhausting_ , though.  She can never escape them, either; they constantly seek her out, drawn like moths to flame.  Just the previous evening, when Irene was narrowing down her list of possible entrances to the Chamber by comparing old family tales to Hogwarts floor plans from 1500 onward, an owl rapping at the door to the Slytherin common room summoned her to the top of the Astronomy Tower.  There, a fellow student—a fellow _female_ student, one year Irene’s senior, whose trust Irene worked very hard to earn—tearfully confessed her attraction to Irene.

            “And what am I supposed to do with _that_ information?” Irene asks the sleeping basilisk curled up in Salazar Slytherin’s mouth.  “Godiva is…”  Godiva Norton, Ravenclaw, another pure-blood, very smart, skin the color of milk chocolate, one of the only people in this entire school who can make Irene laugh genuinely.  “… very pretty,” she concludes with a sigh.

            Even though Irene didn’t give it that name, she thinks “Chamber of Secrets” an appropriate title for her place.  She knows everyone else’s secrets, but no one knows hers.

            No one at Hogwarts knows, for example, that Irene is a descendant of Salazar Slytherin on her mother’s side.  And no one knows that Irene is a Parselmouth, a gift that apparently skipped a few generations.  The last known Parselmouth in her family had been a great-grandfather she’d never known.  No one knows she likes girls, either, not even Godiva, who took a huge risk in telling Irene what she feels.  Who trusts Irene.

            People are exhausting, and actually _liking_ people is even more so.  Irene looks around for somewhere to sink to the floor, but everything is covered in dust and, in some places, animal bones.  She clicks her tongue, and then points her wand at a spot by a pillar and says, “ _Scourgify_ ,” as she’s seen her mother do.  The dust only shifts a little.  Well, she’s never used that spell before, but part of her thinks she’s just not suited for domesticity.

            That’s a shame, because the entire Chamber is in dire need of sprucing up.  It’s moldy in places, and in one corner there’s a pale, colorless snakeskin, meters long, from when the basilisk last shed.  She eyes the snakeskin with no fear at all, knowing that it presents no danger.  She’s sure that if she can find some way to transport it out, she’ll make a killing off of it in Knockturn Alley.  Basilisk scales, like dragon scales, are armored and deflect enchantments.

            All of these puzzles to be solved, and so little time.  Irene checks the timepiece in the pocket of her robe.  She only has about an hour to explore before she has to mount her broom and head back to Slytherin Dungeon.  After looking around once more, she smiles to herself.  Her place.

            Later, when she returns, she’ll act as if everything’s normal.  She’ll do her homework, laugh with her fellow students, and then head to bed and dream of pretty girls, and Chambers, and secrets.


End file.
